Outsourcing Human Suffering.

How the EU sponsors violence, terrorism and torture in the name of migration control.

Every now and again we see snippets of news about another rickety boat full of Africans, capsizing in the Mediterranean. Sometimes a few hundred people drown, other times they remain aboard the ships of volunteer rescue organisations, who then have to negotiate their entry into EU ports. Most of these boats have been bullied into giving up their life-saving operations. Individuals who still try are being prosecuted, pressurized and ridiculed. One of the main receiving countries, Italy, currently has the most right-wing government in Europe since WW2. Refugees are no longer given refuge, in defiance of international law.

The EU has effectively silenced the outcry of desperation that was the crisis of 2015, when over a million people entered the EU, sometimes literally crawling their way into the continent, carrying with them trauma’s we could hardly imagine.

But in spite of appearances, the crisis never disappeared. Millions are still suffering, homeless, penniless, traumatized and horribly vulnerable to abuse. As I have detailed in my book DISPLACED, the EU has successfully managed to obscure the suffering from view. It has done this by outsourcing the crisis in two ways.